The Batcave, a Graffiti Landmark in Brooklyn, Grows Up

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The Batcave, a derelict warehouse in Brooklyn, was a canvas for graffiti for decades. Visit it in this 360° video before it is renovated.Published OnMarch 7, 2017CreditCreditTim Chaffee/The New York Times. Technology by Samsung.

The lone sentinel of the neighborhood’s postindustrial, pre-apocalyptic days is the so-called Batcave. A former Brooklyn Rapid Transit power station built in 1904, it was decommissioned in the 1950s and became a punk squat decades later, playing host to raucous dance parties and graffiti on practically every surface.

Like many of the buildings lining the fetid waterway, it is poised for a rebirth. This year, the nonprofit Powerhouse Environmental Arts Foundation plans to break ground on a project that will provide a haven for two of the canal’s most endangered species: artists and manufacturers. The foundation plans to renovate and expand the power station, turning it into a factory of sorts for the production of art. The project, the Powerhouse Workshop, will include metalwork, woodwork, printmaking, ceramics and fiber art, as well as exhibition space.

“The building has long been a destination for artists, and we wanted to keep it that way,” Katie Dixon, the foundation’s executive director, said during a recent tour of the cavernous former turbine hall.

The Powerhouse Workshop will share at least one thing with its tonier neighbors: top-shelf designers, namely Herzog & de Meuron, the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss firm, who may now qualify as the most famous architects to work within a Superfund site.

Herzog & de Meuron’s breakout project was the Tate Modern, which took the old Bankside Power Station and turned it into one of the most popular museums in London. In Brooklyn, the designers are attempting the reverse, transforming a hub of underground culture back into an industrial complex, albeit for manufacturing art.

The foundation spent four years studying what to do with the power station after purchasing it in 2012 for $7 million. The initial thought was studio space, but after surveying artists, the Powerhouse team discovered a greater unmet need: fabricating the art.

That need has been growing more acute, as the same real estate pressures pushing out artists are displacing the artisans and manufacturers who helped realize their work. The foundation anticipates that the project will create more than 100 jobs.

Operations will spread across the existing turbine hall and a new structure that traces the form of the boiler house that stood next door before its demolition in the 1950s.

“The building always seemed very incomplete without the other third,” said Ascan Mergenthaler, a senior partner at Herzog & de Meuron who is overseeing the project. “Any addition should occupy the footprint of the original, so both become a whole again.”

The new six-story structure is essentially a large rectangle imbued with Herzog & de Meuron’s pyrotechnic modesty. Where the original building had a pitched roof and a pair of giant smokestacks, the new structure is flat. The original roofline will be visible, however, a ghost incised in the pattern of the facade. There had been discussions about creating new ventilation systems in the shape of the smokestacks, but that was deemed superfluous.

“It’s always a very slippery slope how much you let the original building influence your designs,” Mr. Mergenthaler said. “We only take the things that make sense for operations today and throw the rest away.”

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A rendering of the building in Gowanus, Brooklyn.CreditHerzog & de Meuron

One thing the Powerhouse will not be throwing away is the Batcave’s graffiti.

While the building needs considerable structural work, and a portion of the bricks will have to be removed to make repairs, any old surfaces that can be preserved will be. “It’s an incredible legacy for us to build on,” Ms. Dixon said. “There are so many layers here, we don’t want to take any away. We simply want to add our own.”

Though few individual pieces in the Batcave are particularly notable, Henry Chalfant, a graffiti expert, remarked on a recent tour how the totality of the art is what makes it special, a reminder of the “outlaw spaces” that once populated much more of the city.

“It’s kind of a flashback coming in here for me, and being among all the graffiti,” Mr. Chalfant, who was a producer of the 1983 street art documentary “Style Wars,” said.

The top floor of the turbine hall soars 25 feet to a saw-toothed roof currently open to the sky. The hope is to glass it over to create a staging ground for art in progress, as well as for events and exhibitions. The foundation, established by the philanthropist Joshua Rechnitz, has spent $400,000 on the site so far and plans to start construction this fall. No zoning changes are required since the Powerhouse conforms to the area’s industrial use. The foundation declined to release a budget for the project, which is still out to bid. It plans to open the Powerhouse Workshop in 2020.

Not far from the Powerhouse, the project is already generating excitement. At the BRT Printshop in Red Hook, Brooklyn, which produces screen prints, Luther Davis recently recalled telling some of his artist clients about the complex.

“Instantly, they had ideas for new pieces and new processes, like painting on metal sheets or textiles,” Mr. Davis said. “Just imagine having all these amazing craftspeople sitting around, looking at work or sipping coffee, all the ideas they might have. You can’t do that over the phone or email.”

The Powerhouse Workshop hopes to welcome powerhouses of the art world as well as striving artists. The latter might even pay reduced fees that would be offset by the more established — and expensive — work of others.

To Ms. Dixon, it is an epochal opportunity for the New York art scene. “Even Andy Warhol,” she said, “had to leave the Factory to produce his work.”